Fiction. Poetry. Essays. In our call announcing the theme for this issue, we said, ‘We are blessed or cursed to live in these interesting times. For Volume 21 we offer the theme of Appalachia Acting Up. Take it as and where you will: political protest, community conflict, childhood tantrums, family quarrels, life in the theater, life as drama queen, technology on the fritz, your own or your characters’ misspent youth…Surprise us!‘ Well, we certainly were surprised! Surprised both at the diverse varieties of acting up to be encountered, and pleasantly surprised at the quality of the writing that describes it. There is to be found within these pages all the acting up in our list and much, much more. The youngest author in this collection is fourteen. The oldest…well, we’re not sure and we’re not going to ask. But these writers are significantly older. And still acting up. Which is to say that 'acting up’ is not a thing limited by age. Nor is it limited by race, gender, sexual orientation, nor any of the other constructs by which we separate ourselves one from another. We all feel the urge to break the bonds of conformity, to remove from ourselves the shackles of convention and control, to throw off William Blake’s ‘mind-forg’d manacles.’–The Editors, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel